


Lyssa

by midnightflame



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Bad Ending, Experimentation, Horror, Hunting behavior, Implied Relationships, M/M, Madness, Possessive Behavior, Psychological Horror, Unethical Experimentation, bad movie references
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-31
Updated: 2018-07-31
Packaged: 2019-06-19 02:06:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,951
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15499932
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/midnightflame/pseuds/midnightflame
Summary: “Tell me then. . .” Shiro asks, his voice smooth as black ice, his intentions just as dangerous. “Who saves you?”





	Lyssa

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to my first horror-esque piece! It was originally written for a zine (had to be kept under 3k) and I am now posting it, but given the nature of the story, I do hope you heed the warnings. As for a little background on the title, Lyssa is the Greek goddess of rage/madness and from this, rabies, which is under the genus Lyssavirus (I love how things connect sometimes). Needless to say, the inspiration for this piece came out of this. And I swear I love Sheith, this is just. . .a darker take. Like imagine Kuron didn't wake up. . .or in this case, Kuro takes completely over. 
> 
> Anyway, I hope you all enjoy it, and as usual, you can come yell at me over on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/ByMidnightFlame) !

They say hope is the light at the end of the tunnel. It’s that bright flash when you’re sinking in darkness. It’s the thing you reach for when everything around you has said _enough already - give in_. 

Keith sees a light. Back and forth, it swings in the distance, throwing pale yellow across the walls with every pass. Through an open door, down a hallway long enough to be life-rending, it flickers and illuminates. He watches as his fingers unfurl from his palm, stretching for the hope set an impossibility away. On his tongue, he tastes iron. In his limbs, he feels lead piercing his bones. There’s nothing there, however. Just a heaviness drilling through him, his thoughts molten, his mind hazy with smoke and ash. 

Something whispers from the back of his head to get up. Fight, fight, _fight_. 

But there’s a cold settling into his lungs that’s turning his heart to ice, and he knows the source of that chill even if he can’t clearly see it yet. His vision swims in and out of focus; he still swears he sees that light though. Swinging back and forth, back and forth. . .

A boot tip prods at the inner aspect of his elbow. Keith shifts his head, blinking as he follows the line of that leg up to a hip then chest. Before he can get a face into view, he’s being straddled. A cough sputters out of him, slick with copper bits. Everything aches.

Everything tells him to give in.

But he knows this touch, the fingers that travel almost fondly along the line of his jugular and tip his head back to the center. He knows the curve of those lips and the gray of those eyes. 

He doesn’t know the person looking down at him though, pitying him, maybe. Keith doesn’t know if Shiro has that capacity anymore. He can still look at him with hunger, however. The not-quite-right sort of hunger. It's the look a lion gets when it’s standing over a gazelle, mouth clamped around its throat as the life bleeds out of it, just daring the jackals to try and steal from him. 

A desire claimed. 

Keith feels his lips move, but only silence fills his throat. There is nothing. 

Nothing. 

His eyes meet Shiro’s, just as a smile spreads slow and precise across his lips. Something hot stings at his eyes. Keith can only watch as Shiro’s gaze slips from his, following the line his thumb is now running down over his neck. A little pressure is applied; Keith feels his heart jump-start. His lips part again but no sound escapes, his voice chained and bound to his throat. 

He wonders if he’ll ever be heard again. 

Shiro leans down, that smile spread wide and sharp as a half-hung moon. A breath coats his ear, warm as only life can make it, and the feel of it makes something in Keith’s core churn with ideas of revolt. Then Shiro is speaking, each syllable like a spike driven into his flesh. 

“As many times as it takes, right?”

Keith wants to speak, but silence has stolen the retaliatory words from his tongue. So, he turns his head and watches the light shift, back and forth, waiting for the moment it will blink out of existence.

*

“This is some real Hotel California shit right here. I mean, what the fuck? What the actual _fuck_ was that?”

That. As in the slithering, scaling mess of a creature that had cornered the four of them in a room that looks fit for preparing a five-star lunch. In the hallway outside, that thing gives a whooping cry, deep and resonate. The sort of cry that reverberates right through your soul and wakes the irrational side of fear. Keith only hopes there’s one of them, that what they’ve heard is a beast stifled in its attempts and not a call to arms.

The lights flicker above, throwing faces into sharp relief only to cut out seconds later as darkness claims its right to rule. Along the walls, refrigeration units scrape the ceiling, standing side-by-side with clear glass doors revealing jar after jar on white wire shelves. A pale blue glow stems from the bottom of each, offering just enough light to see by and turning the contents of the jars a smoky gray. 

He’s fairly certain this is another lab, and he wants to call them all abandoned if the bodies along the way and the fine film of dust are to be reliable indications of that. Forcefully abandoned. Is that a term?

Sort of like asking a king to abdicate his throne while you’ve got the guillotine blade leveraged over his head.

“How. . . just how is this anything like Hotel California? There is literally some rabid. . . robeast clawing through the one door between us and sanctuary!” Hunk gestures towards the silver doors at the far left corner like an exasperated Vanna White. “This isn’t the high life drowning us in misery!” 

“God, what I wouldn’t give for a master suite and champagne. . .”

“Lance!”

“I’m just saying. . ."

“Don’t say it. . .” Pidge groans.

“We’re never checking out of here, are we?”

“Focus!” Keith growls. He’s been scouring the room for any potential exits, fingers trailing over walls for PIN pads or telltale divots betraying openings sealed but potentially coaxed open. “There has to be some other way to get out of here.”

“Well, that’s a hopeful outlook on all this,” Pidge murmurs as she relinquishes her bayard and begins searching as well.

The pounding on the doors cease. Seconds pass as fingers travel over walls, searching, searching. Hoping. The doors give a sudden and violent shudder, their centers warping in the aftermath of the hit. Silence ripples throughout the room in its wake, each Paladin stilling, freezing the very breaths in their lungs. 

From the hallway, a loud screech pierces the air, thin and frustrated. Keith remembers red-tailed hawks in the desert, the screams of jackrabbits. Everything goes round and round, one end feeding another’s beginning.

“Keep looking.” 

No one bothers to cut back at him with a comment. Minutes pass. The doors quake at random intervals, but don’t give any further. 

“So, umm. . .if we can’t find a way out. . .”

“We’ve gotta fight that thing, yes, Hunk.”

“I was hoping you had a better plan.”

“There are no better plans. Only the ones that get us out alive,” Keith mutters. His fingers circle around a switch, but flicking it produces nothing. Only a soft clicking sound that dies out seconds after making itself known.

He exhales softly.

“Keith?”

His thoughts crash to a halt just as his heart rate quickens. Head snapping up, Keith swivels on his heels to look around the room. 

“Guys, was that. . .?” Lance asks, hesitant.

“No, no. . . no. . .” Pidge murmurs, shaking her head. “You read the same thing I did in those charts. So don’t -“

“Shiro!” Keith cuts her off, voice trembling but determined. Foolishly so, maybe, but he believes. Goddamn does he believe. He has to believe. “He’s alive. . . He’s alive. . . Shiro!”

Something gives at the opposite end of the room, and a small line of light appears through the opposite wall. The pounding at the doors begins to intensify as the wall gives way, inch by stilted inch. He can just make out the outline of a familiar figure, recognizes the grunts given with every press of that body into the hidden door.

“Shiro!” The smile on his face is damn near resplendent in its relief. Pidge shakes her head at him and sighs, though Keith catches the faint smile on her lips. “Go! Before the doors give and that thing gets in here!”

“You don’t have to tell me twice!” Lance, rifle in hand and trained at the doors, moves around the three central lab stations towards the opening in the wall. Shiro has disappeared behind it, though one arm remains pressed flat against its surface to hold it open. 

Just barely wide enough to fit a body. 

Keith turns his attention back to the main entrance where the dent has grown larger, the doors now splitting apart at the center. It’s not enough for the creature to get inside, but he can see the tongue licking at the edges, tasting the air, and just beyond that, the rows of concentrically lined teeth, clinking together whenever the tongue slips back behind nonexistent lips. 

It’s a choking cough that pulls his attention back to the other end of the room. 

Hand pressed to his side, Lance is staring up at Shiro, a tight and thoroughly pained smile pulling at his mouth. He breathes out, words trembling as they tumble from his mouth. “Clever boy. . .”

After an exhale that shudders, Hunk grabs Lance by the shoulders and pulls him back into his arms. He’s yelling for them all to retreat further into the room, but Keith can’t hear his words. What he does hear is silence static-sharp in his ears, ricocheting around in his head like a bullet trying to find the place it can do the most damage. 

It’ll find his heart in the next moment or two.

Lance’s hand is dark, smeared with a hue that drips near-black across his Paladin armor, stains his fingertips and is beginning to work itself into the corner of his mouth. 

When Shiro steps into the room, he looks at his right hand like it’s something foreign, new. _Exciting_. That’s what the smile on his lips tells Keith. He licks at his thumb, then flicks his gaze back to Lance. But he doesn’t keep it there. Instead, Shiro finds Keith on the next exhale. 

“It took me a little time, but I’ve finally found you,” Shiro says with that same smile, bright and violent, painted over his lips. “You came here looking for me, right?” 

Keith feels the nod his head begins to make and stops it abruptly. It leaves his head tipped to the side, locked in place by sudden confusion. 

“Keith!”

He doesn’t let his gaze leave Shiro, but he is listening. From the corner of his eye, he sees Pidge over at the wall, fingers frantically dancing over a PIN pad.

“We have to get Lance out of here,” Hunk hisses at him as he brushes past him to where Pidge is working.

“Oh no, I’m fine. I’m just. . . you know. . .” Lance murmurs with a mirthless laugh. He tries to gesture with his hand, the one currently wrapped around Hunk’s neck, and only manages a weak flurry of fingertips. “Bleeding out or something.”

Shiro whistles, low and sweet, and it sends a fine chill slicing down their spines. The creature yowls through the buckled-in portion of the doors.

And then, silence. It fills the room, as hot and oppressive as a monsoon summer’s afternoon, thick with the promise of more to come. 

The PIN pad beeps consent, and seconds later, the wall slides away with a quiet whoosh of sound. Hunk slips through first, carrying Lance with him. Pidge goes second, leaving Keith standing there in the doorway with his gaze locked on Shiro’s. For a moment, he wonders why he isn’t moving, why his legs insist on rooting themselves there. The answer arrives seconds later when an electric yellow starts to shift within the gray of Shiro’s eyes. As though pushed by gusts of wind, it dances in the smoke of his gaze, thin and wispy, glowing bright in the dark of the room.

Mesmerizing. 

Pidge grabs his elbow and yanks him through the door with a growl. 

“We’re moving. _Now_.”

Or they would have. The door shuts behind them, leaving them in the opposite hallway. Lights flicker, sporadic jolts of purple spitting up over the floor only to diminish to a dusky glow. Keith takes to step forward but finds himself struck through by stillness a breath later.

It clicks.

Clicks, and clicks, and clicks. Sharp pinpricks of sound echoing out against the tiled floors. They know this. 

Beside him, Hunk’s breathing starts to run ragged. Lance huffs out a weak laugh. 

“Move,” Keith murmurs, his gaze trained on the intersection to their right. “Quietly. When you get to the corner, take a left.”

“We’re leaving?” Pidge asks, though there’s no real question lingering in those words.

“We need to get Lance back to the Lions. That hallway leads back to the tunnel that will take us above ground again.”

 _Easy_ , Keith tells himself. They’ll measure every step, every breath, and if weighed correctly, won’t be found wanting by the time they reach the end of the tunnel. That’s how it all seems to go, one foot after another, escape drawing closer and closer with every beat of their hearts. He watches as Lance’s lips part and breathes life into a smile. 

Pidge’s cry rends the air around them. “It’s here!”

Pivoting on his heel, Keith pulls his bayard free and turns as teeth snap shut inches from his face. The creature wriggles there, his sword through its chest, and snarls with frustrated fury. With each push of its rear legs, it drives the blade deeper and its face ever closer to Keith’s. He smells blood on its breath, too fresh to be called putrid. Sharp and metallic, just like the teeth lining its jaws. It has no eyes though, a funny realization that bites into him with bitter humor. Two thin slits for a nose at the end of a tapered triangular head and a tongue like knotted rope that lashes out against his visor. 

“Go! **Now** ,” he screams at them. 

The beast screams right back at him in return, a thought-rupturing sound against his ears.

Behind him, he hears the scrambling steps of retreat. Another scream bursts from the creature, boiling with rage. Heaving out a readying breath, Keith closes his eyes and counts.

One. 

The creature’s weight buckles suddenly. It makes a gurgling cry as the blade cuts through its chest plate and splits its throat. 

He blinks, then follows the glowing green line wrapped around its rear limbs to where Pidge is standing behind it. She shrugs at him, offering a weak smile.

“I know I joked about dissecting this thing but. . . well, good job?” 

“I didn’t even make it to the count of two,” Keith exhales, laughing despite himself.

“Yeah, well, you can’t always be the rash one.”

“Hunk and Lance?”

“Through the doors at the end of the tunnel. Haven’t heard any weird screams over the comm channel either,” Pidge explains as she retracts the line from around the creature’s legs. She shifts her weight, one foot after the other, before settling into a wide-legged stance and setting her attention on Keith. Her stare is hard-lined and unapologetic. “They’re making monsters. All this ‘quintessence sick’ stuff the Galra kept writing about in their notes. . . it’s just overdosing, eradicating, _mutilating_ genetic codes.”

He knows where she is going with this.

“Shiro is Shiro. . .”

A shake of her head as she starts towards the intersection. “He’s not, Keith. He’s. . . he’s one step away from being fodder for hybridization.”

Words coagulate in his throat. Keith swallows them down as he dislodges his blade and watches as the creature’s body drops to the floor like a butcher’s discarded cuts. Muscles fasciculate with dying electric pulses across its side, chest quivering with phantom breaths. Turning his back on the sight, he moves behind Pidge and keeps walking towards the doors.

Escape is an arm’s length away.

When she reaches the end of the hallway, Pidge simply stands there, her eyes full of sorrow, a hand on the door. “I’m sorry, Keith. . .I -”

Her expression shifts, confusion furrowing her brow. She looks. . . lost.

Keith studies her for a moment, then goes to take a step forward.

“Keith, move!”

“I. . . can't. . . I’m. . .” Worry creases his forehead as he glances down. Thin, black fingers are wrapped around his ankle, nails like sickles glancing against his calf. They say a dead wolf can still bite. A blink as his thoughts try to sort themselves out, but everything drops into the void as a low whistle rustles the hair beside his ear.

There’s no sound when it happens. There’s only the hallway lights sputtering out in silence and fingers slinking along the neckline of his Paladin suit, a touch known and gentle. 

Far too gentle. 

The jerk that has him tumbling back into the darkness is clean and powerful. And it’s his name, a piercing scream from Pidge’s lips, that sends him into the blackout consuming the facility once more.

*

There’s a light at the end of the hallway. It flickers on, then off, then on again as it chases the shadows from the walls.

Keith glances over as his fingers furl, then unfurl, never quite reaching. Too far away.

Too far gone.

He blinks away the haze curling around his thoughts like smoke claiming breathable air. 

A small huff of laughter washes against his cheek. It’s warm, and it sounds wonderful, and he could sink in its familiarity and all the memories it evokes. He could forget this moment and erase all the ones just before it.

Rolling his tongue along his lower lip, he turns his gaze to Shiro and stares at the yellow dancing as light and airy as candlelight in his eyes. It’s like watching neon-lit eels float through gray seas, twisting and turning, tumbling through the waters with grace and ease.

Completely at home.

Shiro smiles at him, this small twist of his lips, completely frosted over. 

_This is the way of the world_ , it murmurs. _This is how it begins_. 

“Tell me then. . .” Shiro asks, his voice smooth as black ice, his intentions just as dangerous. “Who saves you?”


End file.
